women in combat

Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness talked to James Dobson today on Family Talk about the expansion of the roles of women service members and the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, which they warned will have horrific ramifications. Donnelly, who has warned that allowing women in combat roles and gays to serve openly will leadtothemilitary’sdownfall, told Dobson that the culture of the military is in grave jeopardy due to the “process of diversifying and imposing LGBT agendas,” maintaining that “the civil rights movement is being co-opted by the advocates of diversity, by advocates of the LGBT equality group.”

The new concept of inclusion is a radical departure from the military’s honorable tradition of recognizing individual merit. In fact the armed forces were way ahead of the civilian world in recognizing individual merit regardless of race, regardless of gender even, but the way we’re going now, the civil rights movement is being co-opted by the advocates of diversity, by advocates of the LGBT equality group. There are a lot of influences under the current president who unfortunately are in the driver seat in the Pentagon and they are making some serious problems here. Can it change? Yes, the military is resilient, but right now people have got to become aware, first of all, of what’s happening and secondly, figure out a way to do something about it.

I think every major conservative cause there is has taken a beating in the last several years, whether it’s health care, whether it’s the economy, our banking system, all kinds of things have been seriously harmed in the last three years. So are we going to give up on all of that? No, I certainly hope not, not as Americans. But the military is different because it’s the only military we have. If you cause problems in education, you can always homeschool; you can go to a different school system, if you don’t like your state you can move to another state; but if something is wrong with the culture of the military—Reagan had an easy job with it, all he had to do was rebuild the ships and the planes and the hardware—but rebuilding the culture of the military after we go through this process of diversifying and imposing LGBT agendas and lowering standards to accommodate it all, this is going to be more difficult.

While Truth in Action Ministries recently informed us that the “radical homosexual agenda” is the iceberg out to sink the ship that is America, it turns out that the plot is even thicker, as it appears that feminism and evolution are also culprits in the country’s devastation. Today on the group’s flagship radio program Truth that Transforms, Doug Phillips of Vision Forum appeared to discuss an event he organized in Branson, Missouri, “to celebrate [the] Christian Legacy of Titanic’s sinking.”

“Though more than 1,500 people died in this international tragedy, the Darwinian notion of the ‘survival of the fittest’ was rejected in favor of the age-old Christian doctrine that the ‘strong sacrifice for the weak,’” Phillips said in a statement.

As Julie Ingersoll in Religion Dispatches notes, “as is often the case with ‘providential history,’ the actual history is distorted to tell make specific theological points”:

By percentage, twice as many women in third class died as did women in first class; children in first class had nearly three times the survival rate of those in third. One would only use "raw numbers" if one was trying to make a point not supported by the numbers.

In biblical patriarchy, the refrain of "women and children first" hides an agenda whereby the women are "first" only insofar as they keep their place which is subordinate to men.

On Truth that Transforms, Phillips pointed to an 1898 shipwreck on the French ship La Bourgogne where hundreds of women and children died, blaming it on “a culture that embraced evolution” and “the French Revolution which had rejected biblical Christianity and embraced paganism.” He went on to argue that the theory of evolution ultimately leads to the growth of feminism, and the “result is babies are killed en masse, women are treated like chattel and men no longer take on their masculine role as defenders.” The host, former Concerned Women for America president Carmen Pate, later bemoaned that evolution and feminism have “infiltrated” almost all aspects of society:

Phillips: People that were on board the deck of the Titanic at that time were individuals that grew up in a culture which was distinctively Christian in its perspective of the role of men and women and there’s an interesting contrast because in the year 1898 a French vessel called La Bourgogne sunk and when it sunk the sailors and the officers literally threw women and children into the water, beat them over the head, and the men lived and the women died. It sent shockwaves throughout the entire world, people said, ‘how could such a thing happen?’ And in trying to understand why that happened, the commentary was, they grew up in a culture that embraced evolution, it was the struggle of the survival of the fittest, they grew up in the culture of the French Revolution which had rejected biblical Christianity and embraced paganism and the consequences were that men treat women horrifically.

Now we flash forward to the year 2012 and this year our president has finally taken us over the abyss and we have full-fledged commitment to women in the frontlines of combat in overseas battles, we need to understand that that’s the first time in the history of the West that any nation has formally endorsed such a thing and it represents a radical departure from the values that were on board the ship in 1912.

…

Phillips: Evolution says the struggle of the survival of the fittest, there are no differences between men and women, there is no charity, there is no deference, and in an evolutionary world feminism reaches its height and we see no distinctions. The result is babies are killed en masse, women are treated like chattel and men no longer take on their masculine role as defenders.

…

Pate: As you’ve pointed out, throughout society for thousands of years we have looked at the protection of the innocent as of utmost importance and yet as we’ve allowed evolution and feminism to infiltrate our education system, even our churches and certainly our entertainment, our the media, we have lost sight of what God’s word has said about the protection of the innocent.

The Center for Military Readiness’s Elaine Donnelly has been making the rounds this week to discuss what she alleges is the Pentagon’s attempted cover-up of a marked increase in violent sexual assaults in the Army since 2006. The increase in sexual assaults was reported [pdf] by the Army in January and Defense Secretary Leon Pannetta immediately called the trend “unacceptable” and vowed to take steps to stop it. This week, a federal judge ordered the Army to release more detailed records on the assaults, at the request of the ACLU and the Service Women’s Action Network.

Donnelly, however, asserts that the Pentagon has been trying to cover up the increase in sexual assaults in order to cover for a new policy allowing women to officially serve in combat positions.

Speaking with Frank Gaffney on Secure Freedom Radio yesterday, Donnelly said that adding “social burdens” to the military – like allowing women to serve in combat and gays to serve openly – will eventually topple institution like a tower of Jenga blocks. Donnelly has previously claimed that allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military would "break the all-volunteer force."

Gaffney: Are we at risk, Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness, of breaking the all-volunteer force with all of this?

Donnelly: Yes, yes we are. And what we’re heading toward is what I call the Jenga block military. If you’ve ever played that game with wooden blocks, you know you take the blocks out of the bottom, and you load more burdens on the top. Eventually, the tower becomes so unstable it collapses. And it’s a fun game to play on your kitchen table. But if you take things away from our military, and you keep adding social burdens on top, what you do is make a weakened force, you make that tower unstable. You, in essence, weaken the infrastructure of the culture of the military.

And let’s face it, it isn’t just about the weapons and the planes and ships and all of those hardware things, it’s the people who defend the military – the all-volunteer force. If we are doing great harm to both men and women in the military, if sexual assaults become so demoralizing, so conducive to indiscipline, what we’re doing is weakening the finest military in the world, we’re doing it gradually and according to this Army report, the progression is relentless. And it’s going in the wrong direction, it’s getting worse. And we certainly should not make it even worse than that by placing female soldiers into direct ground combat infantry battalions.

Somebody’s got to blow the whistle on this. Social engineers never are held accountable for their handiwork. Instead, the Pentagon invites them in to do more mischief, to create more problems. They don’t know what they’re doing. This report indicates that we need to really analyze this thing, and frankly Congress needs to intervene before it is too late.

Donnelly: You can understand why the Army did not want to trumpet these findings: they don’t fit the template. Well, now we’re going to put women into land combat battalions, the ones that are all male, the tip of the spear. They just pretend there’s no problem, and if theirs is a problem, well the problem is a myth. So, we’ll just do more training, we’ll hire more, what do they call it, ‘sexual assault response coordinators.’

Mefferd: Oh, good grief.

Donnelly: Starts to make a pretty good salary. You’re talking about a jobs program here.

Last week, Rick Santorum explained that he was opposed to any plans by the Pentagon to place women in combat positions, asserting that the "types of emotions that are involved" would compromise combat effectiveness.

Santorum quickly "clarified," saying that he didn't mean that women were emotionally unsuited for serving in combat but rather that male soldiers would be protective of female soldiers and inclined to compromise the mission in order to defend them.

Not surprisingly, Bryan Fischer agrees with Santorum ... and is even willing to defend the view that Santorum himself rejected: that women are inherently emotionally unfit for combat:

But not only are women emotionally unfit for combat but also physically unfit because, as Fischer explained in his column today, "the average female soldier does not even have the arm strength to throw a grenade far enough to keep herself from getting blown up."